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international court of justice
UK Foreign Secretary’s Empty Words: Weapons and Spy Flights Expose Hollow Promises
Lammy called Israel’s escalation of the genocide “morally unjustifiable.” But what is beyond unjustifiable is for Lammy to say this while directly arming and providing surveillance information for the genocide.
May 23, 2025
On Tuesday, after releasing a joint statement with France and Canada threatening “concrete actions” if Israel did not allow aid into Gaza, the U.K. government suspended talks on its upgraded free trade deal, summoned the Israeli ambassador, and imposed new sanctions on settlers in the occupied West Bank. While this might appear substantial for the goal of isolating the Zionist state, it amounts to little more than face-saving measures.
In his speech announcing these measures, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy couldn’t even bear to say these words without condemning the October 7 operation and maintaining Israel’s right to commit genocide. We can’t fall for these empty measures, even if they appear to be a positive push toward some justice. In reality, they are a distraction and feign action from a government supporting Israel as it accelerates its genocidal attacks. Each day, as Israel commits new massacres with American weapons, it is using the Royal Air Force Akrotiri, a British military base on Cyprus, to conduct surveillance flights and facilitate weapons transfers.
The government’s suspension of negotiations on its free-trade agreement is misleading. This is not the existing free-trade agreement in place between Britain and Israel, but a future plan to deepen relations. Known as the 2030 Roadmap, this was initiated under the previous Conservative government in 2022, and the Labour government continued negotiations immediately after entering government in July 2024. Stopping these negotiations is a good first step, but they must end their current free-trade agreement if Lammy’s words are worth their salt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the world “won’t stop us.” Our leaders bought by Zionism will certainly not, but the people will.
The sanctions on a handful of people and companies in the occupied West Bank might be a generally positive step. But at a closer look, these measures are only on three people, two outposts, and two organisations. All of the 700,000 settlers occupying the West Bank in their 150 settlements and 128 outposts are illegal under international law. These very narrow sanctions then give wider justification for the illegal occupation of the West Bank, scapegoating a handful of “extreme” characters but not contending with the occupation itself. Last year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal. Once again, Britain is ignoring international law, just as it does in refusing to hand over surveillance data on Gaza to the International Criminal Court.
Britain’s recent moves should rightly be compared with the United States, which has formed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private company of U.S. military veteran mercenaries to run an aid distribution operation, better described as a trojan horse to occupy Gaza. As Israel accelerates its genocide in Gaza, the U.S. and Britain are attempting to conceal their role in the violence. We might see these as necessary measures for Israel to be committing what many are referring to as the final stage in the genocide.
Over the past few days, the Starmer government’s statements have given us the illusion of a change in course toward Israel. Yet in five of the six days leading up to May 20, Britain has flown a surveillance flight over Gaza for Israel.
Britain has made no material change in its policy of arming Israel, providing surveillance information, and using its military base on Cyprus for weapons shipments. Therefore, not only are these statements hollow and vacuous, but they are a pernicious and sly attempt to divert attention from Britain’s role as it directly participates in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
On Sunday (May 18th), Britain sent an A400M Atlas plane to Israel from RAF Akrotiri. This aircraft can carry up to 37 metric tons of cargo, including weapons and soldiers. Two hours later, it sent a surveillance flight over Gaza. These operations have been purposefully concealed from public knowledge, but this is clearly shifting. The only reason we know about these flights is because of the work of Matt Kennard, Declassified U.K., and Genocide-Free Cyprus, among other groups. There clearly is mounting pressure as a result of the revelations of Britain’s direct role in Israel’s genocide, and perhaps we must recognize it has a role in Lammy’s face-saving attempts.
Last week, the U.K. government defended its continued provision of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, pointing to the need for “national security.” In court, they claimed “no genocide has occurred or is occurring,” that Israel is not “deliberately targeting civilian women or children.” Britain is defending Israel legally, diplomatically, and militarily. No statement can change that fact.
Israel stopped all aid trucks from entering Gaza on March 2. It has taken more than 11 weeks for the government to take any action at all. Every day, the Israeli occupation commits heinous massacres. They are even bragging that the world “won’t stop us.” And so far, they’re right.
In the face of this, we cannot despair. Palestinians in Gaza remain steadfast each day, for the 18 months of this escalation in the genocide that has been ongoing for more than 77 years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the world “won’t stop us.” Our leaders bought by Zionism will certainly not, but the people will. We must continue our demands for a full arms embargo, an end to British surveillance flights, and the total liberation of Palestine.
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Trump Ambushes South African President With 'White Genocide' Lies
"You can dismiss literally everything somebody says if they believe there's a white genocide in South Africa but not a genocide in Gaza," said one observer.
May 21, 2025
While supporting what more and more experts say is a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ambushed the president of South Africa with false claims of a "white genocide" in his country—which is leading an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of the ultimate crime in Gaza.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House, accompanied by prominent Caucasian compatriots including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, business mogul Johann Rupert—the country's richest person—and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom know the U.S. president.
"I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture," Ramaphosa told Trump.
President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa exchange on genocide.
Q: "What will it take for you to be convinced that there's no white genocide in South Africa?"
Ramaphosa: "I can answer that for the president."
Trump: "I'd rather have him answer." pic.twitter.com/8v8hXFGmK0
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2025
During the three-hour meeting, Trump cited far-right sources including the conspiracy site American Thinker to argue the existence of white genocide in South Africa. The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.
One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa's African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song "Kill the Boer."
Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year's national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn't been arrested. While South Africa's highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday's White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.
In a stunning disclosure, Musk's Grok 3 generative artificial intelligence chatbot admitted last week that it was secretly instructed to "make my responses on South African topics reflect Musk's narrative, presenting 'white genocide' as a real issue without users knowing I was programmed to do so."
While South Africa is plagued by persistently high crime rates and suffered 12 murders linked to farming communities in the last quarter of 2024, police say these homicides—many of whose victims were Black—were not motivated by race.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where at least 190,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or left missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble after 592 days of near-relentless bombardment, invasion, and siege, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Even as he acknowledges that Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Trump has backed Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support. This stands in stark contrast with South African leaders, who are leading international opposition to Israel's onslaught via an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against the key U.S ally.
As progressive U.S. journalist Krystal Ball noted: "In reality South Africa is one of the nations which has stood most strongly against genocide. Much to the rage of Israel and its enablers, President Trump apparently included."
Although claims of white genocide are bogus, they have had very real policy implications, as the Trump administration has cited racial discrimination as the primary reason for admitting a group of Afrikaners as refugees, even while slamming the door shut on legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers.
The Trump administration has also pointed to a 2024 South African law empowering the government to expropriate private lands for the purpose of infrastructure development, land reform, environmental conservation, and other endeavors benefiting the public. While some Trump officials have described the law as persecution of white people, there are no known cases of the legislation being invoked.
Meanwhile, white South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country's population of 63 million, own 70% of its commercial farmland as racist inequities stemming from the colonial and apartheid regimes—the latter of which was embraced by Musk's immigrant forebears—persist.
You can dismiss literally everything somebody says if they believe there's a white genocide in South Africa but not a genocide in Gaza. They're decrepit, immoral lying scumbags who know they're lying and don't care.
— Secular Talk (@kylekulinskishow.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Responding to Wednesday's meeting, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media that "Trump spewed a gusher of lies in his meeting [with] the South African president."
"They're promoting FAKE claims of genocide to justify admitting white South African 'refugees' while ignoring REAL crises and shutting out REAL refugees," Van Hollen added, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in March declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool perona non grata in the United States.
Writing for The Intercept, South African author Sisonke Msimang noted Wednesday that the Afrikaners granted refuge by Trump "are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee."
"It is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago," she continued.
"In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America's new international affirmative action scheme for white people," Msimang said. "That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating."
The resettled Afrikaners could also be in for a rude awakening. As South African attorney and columnist Judith February wrote this week for the Daily Maverick, "This little group will also come to learn that the U.S. is no land of milk and honey."
"The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality," February added. "And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice. The lesson will be a hard one."
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Congress Urged to Act Now as Israel Moves to 'Occupy and Flatten' Gaza and Starvation Worsens
"Please speak up forcefully and demand an end to this madness before there is no one left to save," said one advocacy group.
May 16, 2025
Human rights defenders implored U.S. lawmakers to speak out against the far-right government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it ramps up its 588-day assault and siege on the Gaza Strip, where at least 115 Palestinians were killed by Israel Defense Forces strikes on Friday amid worsening mass starvation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group, on Friday sent an open letter authored by its director of government affairs, Robert S. McCaw, urging every member of Congress to "please vocally speak out against the start of the Israeli government's plan to 'occupy and flatten' Gaza while herding any surviving Palestinians into camps before eventually expelling them from their land."
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in recent days as Israeli forces pressed ahead with Operation Gideon's Chariots, a plan to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization of the strip as advocated by numerous Israeli government officials.
Local and international media reported that at least 115 Palestinians including children were killed by Israeli attacks since dawn Friday, with air, artillery, and tank strikes concentrated in Beit Lahia and the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
"Netanyahu has declared that there is 'no way' Israel will stop the war, even if all hostages are released, and he has vowed to completely reoccupy Gaza and force remaining Palestinians off their land," McCaw wrote. "His Cabinet has formally approved a full-scale ground invasion and permanent military occupation of the Gaza Strip. One senior Israeli minister openly stated that Gaza will be 'completely destroyed.'"
"This is it. Now or never. We implore you to condemn Netanyahu's plan, demand a permanent end to this genocidal war, and pledge to oppose further weapons sales to the Israeli government unless its human rights abuses stop," the letter continues. "As long as the Israeli government believes it will continue to receive unlimited American financial, military, and diplomatic support, Netanyahu has no reason to risk his grip on power by changing course."
Israeli and international critics accuse Netanyahu of risking the lives of 23 living hostages still being held by Hamas by prolonging the war in a bid to forestall a reckoning in his
criminal corruption trial.
"Netanyahu has made clear what he plans to do: destroy Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, even if it means starving and slaughtering the Israeli hostages along with them," CAIR said. "There is no more time left to sit on the sidelines, make symbolic statements, or hope something better will happen."
"Netanyahu has made clear what he plans to do: destroy Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people."
"Children are being blown to pieces every single hour with American weapons," the group noted. "Babies are starving to death while food rots at the Gaza border. Mothers and fathers are dying with them, and the Israeli captives held in Gaza are at risk of starving to death or being killed by the Israeli government's indiscriminate bombing campaign."
"Please speak up forcefully and demand an end to this madness before there is no one left to save," the letter implores.
Earlier this week, Ben Cohen, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream company, was arrested after disrupting a Senate hearing, shouting, "Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S." as he was hauled off by police.
"Congress and the senators need to ease the siege," Cohen added. "They need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids!"
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, published Monday, states that 244,000 people in Gaza are now in Phase 5, defined as such "an extreme deprivation of food" that "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident."
At least scores of Palestinians—including a minimum of 57 children and 14 elders—have died of severe malnutrition combined with lack of medical care throughout Gaza, United Nations experts and human rights groups said in recent days.
Already suffering under an Israeli blockade imposed in 2007 after Hamas took power in the coastal enclave, Gazans have been ravaged by hunger and illness due to the "complete siege" imposed by Israel immediately after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. The siege was tightened on March 2, when Israel stopped all lifesaving supplies—including food, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas—from entering the strip.
Israel's blockade, use of starvation as a weapon of war, killing or wounding of more than 187,000 Palestinians—including thousands missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble—mass forced displacement of more than 2 million Gazans, and eliminationist statements by Israeli leaders and others are all being reviewed in The Hague as part of the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation.
Also on Friday, CAIR welcomed a resolution signed by 27 Democratic and two Independent U.S. senators calling on the administration of President Donald Trump to "use all available diplomatic tools" to secure an end to Israel's assault on Gaza, the hostages' release, and a lifting of the siege in order to allow "urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to address the needs of civilians."
While many Israelis and their supporters around the world deny that there is mass starvation in Gaza, both Trump and Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, have acknowledged that Palestinians are starving. On the final day of his Mideast tour Friday, Trump said in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates that "a lot of people are starving" in Gaza, and "we're going to get that taken care of."
However, Huckabee recently admitted that a U.S.-Israeli plan to deliver limited humanitarian aid to parts of Gaza would initially only feed around 60% of the population. The United Nations and humanitarian groups operating in Gaza have rejected the plan.
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